Syriza wants to make itself a mass party

Submitted by martin on 15 July, 2012 - 4:17

Edward Maltby and Martin Thomas from Workers' Liberty visited Thessaloniki and Athens between 5 and 9 July to find out more about the ideas and activities of the Greek left.

On our first morning, we went to the Syriza office - rooms above a cafe in central Thessaloniki, with a big Syriza sign on the outside wall. Later we would meet OKDE comrades in the clubhouse, Iskra, which they run. They would tell us about another place "which is a Syriza cafe". On the Sunday we would meet Antarsya comrades in yet another cafe: "one of our comrades runs that cafe, so we get together there every Sunday".

Vicky Karafoulidou was at the Syriza office. Her job there, so she said with a shrug when we asked, is "more or less everything". Over the time that we talked, three other comrades came in, dealt with phone calls, worked at computers. One came from a court hearing where she had been trying to help an Iraqi asylum-seeker defeat deportation.

Thessaloniki is Greece's second city, with a population of about 800,000. (Athens: four million. Greece's total: 11 million). Thessaloniki is 2300 years old, was the second city of the Byzantine Empire, and has many Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman buildings and ruins, despite the destruction inflicted by a huge city fire in 1917.

Yannis Karliampos is an archaeologist. He joined us for most of the conversation.

Vicky and Yannis did not want to give a formal interview. They thought that should be done by an accredited Syriza representative. But we talked for a couple of hours.

Syriza, they said, had been a small party. Suddenly, after the elections on 6 May and 17 June, in which it rose from four and a half per cent of the vote in 2009 to 27%, "we have many more things to do".

Syriza "wants to make a mass party". Greek society has been depoliticised. The first step is to create new local organisations, enable people to join Syriza without joining one of the groups in the coalition that makes it up, and work towards the unification of Syriza into a single party.

How many members does Syriza have in Thessaloniki? "It's difficult to say", Vicky replied. "Depending on how you define it, you could count the number in Thessaloniki at anything between 300 and 2000 organised members, and beyond that friends and supporters". Syriza organisers will have a clearer idea of actual numbers in September and October, when regular meetings get going again after the summer.

The KKE still has more members than Syriza, despite its vote dropping from 7.5% in 2009 to 4.5% in 2012. KKE is the oldest party in Greece, and has local organisations everywhere, including in rural areas and on the islands, and Syriza has not until now.

In Thessaloniki, Syriza committees in the different districts meet once a month, as a minimum. The all-Thessaloniki coordinating committee meets weekly or fortnightly: it depends.

In the unions, said Vicky and Yannis, Syriza members work with Antarsya, and not always "as Syriza". Their aim is to take decision-making in the unions to the lowest level.

Newspapers supporting Syriza, like the daily Avgi (linked to Synaspismos) and the weekly Epohi (linked to AKOA, another group in Syriza with origins in the old Eurocommunist movement), circulate mainly through kiosks and newsagents rather than hand-to-hand sales, as does the main Antarsya-supporting paper, Prin (linked to NAR).

Some of the groups within Syriza - presumably such as the Trotskyist DEA, with its fortnightly Ergatiki Aristera - sell on the streets, said Vicky and Yannis, and Syriza itself does stalls on the streets from time to time.

We talked about how Syriza might respond if a left government wins office and the European Central Bank or the EU leaders move to cut it off from the eurozone payments network.

Vicky and Yannis thought that was a "strong possibility" and "very difficult". We'd told them that one of us was meeting John Milios, one of Syriza's leading economists, in Athens the next day, and they thought we'd do better to ask him. (Milios would say that Syriza has a "Plan B", but it cannot be made public at this stage).

The important thing, Vicky and Yannis said, is not whether Greece is in the euro or not, but getting the financial means to deal with the crisis. "We ask Europe to understand how dangerous the current course is, and decide to change economic policy. This is not a Greek crisis, but an international crisis. Decisions should be based on the rights of the people, not the interests of the banks.

"In government, Syriza would press the EU to change policy, and seek to ally with other governments in difficulty, like those of Portugal, Spain, and Italy".

But the Portuguese and Spanish governments are of the traditional right in those countries, and Italy's is a "technocratic" administration?

The governments may be right-wing, Vicky and Yannis acknowledged, but the peoples are not. The governments in Italy and Spain are not strong at all, and so are vulnerable to pressure from below.

Syriza will use its alliances in the European left, and argue that "we are all Greeks". It is a problem that European society does not react collectively and simultaneously; we have to change that.

Our "official" interview with Syriza was on our last day in Thessaloniki, with Miltos Ikonomou, a Syriza leader in the city. We returned to the Syriza office. It was later in the morning than our first visit, and the office buzzed with young people hurrying about and phones ringing, frequently interrupting the interview.

Miltos is a teacher by trade, in his late 40s.

First he told us about Syriza's plans on Popular Assemblies: we have recorded those in a separate write-up collecting what we heard about neighbourhood organisation from several different sources.

Then we asked Miltos: if the current government falls, and Syriza forms a left government, what will happen?

"We will have a reaction from the governments in Europe and from the capitalists here in Greece. First, maybe, they will stop the bailout funds. Then maybe capitalists will take their companies and move to other countries - to the Balkans".

How will Syriza respond to that pressure?

"There is an answer, but it is difficult. First, nationalisation of the banks. Restore the minimum wage. Stop privatisation of sectors like the water companies and the port of Thessaloniki. The details are in our programme".

Some economists reckon that the European Central Bank would hit a left government in Greece by suspending the Greek banking system from participation in the eurozone payments system, so that euros in Greek bank accounts could no longer be used for purchases in other eurozone countries.

Miltos found this question "very difficult". He went next door to phone a Syriza comrade, Christos Laskos, who is a professor of economics, but could not reach him. He suggested we ask John Milios, another Syriza economist, and we explained that we had already talked with Milios in Athens.

We went back to asking about Syriza's party-building campaign.

"Now we have about 2000 members in Thessaloniki, with membership cards. A year ago it was 1200".

And your target? "Five thousand".

What sort of people are joining Syriza?

"Mostly young people from the middle class, students from universities..." Workers? "We have a problem there. We have no very strong workers' organisation in Syriza. The workers vote Syriza, but... We will visit workplaces and talk with workers.

"We will go to the bus depots and talk with bus workers in their lunch break".

The managers won't try to stop you?

"No. Not after Syriza won 27%".

How, we asked, does Syriza explain that Greece will be better with a left government?

"With our social programme. We want the people to support us and get involved. We want something like the Popular Unity in Chile".

A reforming left government, with wide popular mobilisation behind it, held office in Chile in 1970-3. It was overthrown by a bloody military coup in September 1973. So we asked: But with a different ending?

"Yes... Like Chavez in Venezuela. We want a popular government".

Greece under a Syriza left government: would it be socialist or capitalist?

"We believe we can bring a socialist society, our dream, step by step. Of course the first left government of Syriza will have a socialist programme".

What about the possibility of a violent retaliation by the state? [From 1967 to 1974 Greece had a military dictatorship, and its 20th century history included many other military coups].

"In the army and the police there are people who support us. The situation in Greece now is different from 20 years ago.

"The people in the army and the police don't want to be involved in politics".

But 50% of the police voted for Golden Dawn?

"Not of the whole police. 50% of the special [riot] police, MAT. The problem is the education those people have received. When we get government, we will abolish the MAT. We want a different kind of police".

Miltos seemed genuinely perplexed, and asked another older Syriza comrade to talk with us. We re-posed the question, mentioning obstruction of reforming left governments by the top civil service as well as the possibility of reaction from the army and police.

"I don't know... If there is a violent reaction from them, there will be a violent reaction from the people.

"Most likely is a refusal to cooperate. We had a case here in Thessaloniki recently when there was a problem among the anarchists. Some are more violent, some are more social, but the police arrested them all.

"We could have problems. I don't know how to deal with it. It would be very difficult to change all the chiefs of the police and so on, but maybe that is the answer..."

Plainly the comrades went away to think about it more: since then we've had an email from the Syriza office detailing Syriza's proposals on the police, which do indeed include the disbandment of MAT, demilitarisation of anti-insurrectional special troopsa ban on police wearing masks or using firearms during demonstrations, union rights for police, etc.

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